As individuals spend more time in front of their computers or other electronic devices having displays, individuals need additional features that personalize their devices and provide a diversion from their fast paced lives. Common sources of a diversion for individuals with access to computers include personal picture files and screen savers. While individuals may have personal picture files stored on or accessible from their computers, the personal picture files need to be accessed from a stored location or as an attachment to an email. There is currently no tool that enables a user to easily access personal picture files on such devices.
Similarly, screen savers can be entertaining and provide a diversion. However, some early conventional screen savers had limited utility. Accordingly, screen savers were developed for providing additional information with the content of the screen saver. With the increased access and popularity of the Internet, some screen savers were developed which provided current weather information with an outdoor scene associated with a particular city. The scene could change from a sunny morning, to a rainy afternoon, to a star-filled night. The screen saver could also be customized to display the temperature and weather forecast for a particular area by entering a zip code. The screen saver would also provide links to popular content areas of a weather web site. However, such screen savers were significantly limited a particular scene provided by the software or service provider.
Other screen savers were developed to provide more advanced information. Information “feeds” received from multiple information sources are aggregated, re-formatted and stored in a personalized real time information display system. When the display system receives a request from a user having a personal computer, the system was arranged to respond with information needed to display a screen saver that includes personalized, up-to-date information, such as traffic, weather and sports, that is of interest to that particular user. Each user had a personalized user profile indicating the categories or types of information that the user desires to receive, such as sports information, weather, investment advisories, and so on, and parameters that specify, for that user, the exact information desired to be received in each category. If the user's personal computer display had remained inactive for a predetermined period of time, the screen saver was activated, causing the personal computer to access the service node, and after interchange of prestored user identification and password data, retrieve information, obtained by the system from a variety of sources, based on the user's individual profile. The retrieved information is displayed on the screen without interrupting the screen saver function, and the displayed personalized data is thereafter updated in the same manner, at user-specified time intervals. While such screen saver systems are more advanced and provide additional personalized information beyond weather, such systems are limited in the display of the content and the user adaptability of the system.
Even more advanced systems were developed to provide user-selected content to a user on demand, and as a screen saver. In conventional information and advertising distribution system, a data server stores and updates a database of information items and advertisements. The information items and advertisements are each categorized so that each has an associated information category. Workstations remotely located from the data server each include a display device, a communication interface for receiving at least a subset of the information items and advertisements in the data server's database and local memory for storing the information items and advertisements received from the data server. An information administrator in each workstation establishes communication with the data server from time to time so as to update the information items and advertisements stored in local memory with at least a subset of the information items and advertisements stored by the data server. An information display controller in each workstation displays on the workstation's display device at least a subset of the information items and advertisements stored in local memory when the workstation meets predefined idleness criteria. At least a subset of the workstations includes a profiler for storing subscriber profile data. The subscriber profile data represents subscriber information viewing preferences, indicating information categories for which the subscriber does and does not want to view information items. The information display controller includes a filter for excluding from the information items displayed on the display device those information items inconsistent with the subscriber profile data. However, such systems provide information which is impersonal, and do not allow for personalization of content such as picture file content.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and apparatus for providing content relevant information with a user's picture file for display of a user's device.